A few years ago, I had written a piece based on data drawn from We Are Social detailing the landscape of Mongolia for mobile. I think of how mobile, and mobile learning, can accelerate development in an area that seems about poised to develop. And once again how to bridge a nomadic culture into a knowledge disseminating one (if that is indeed what they decide they want to do). How mobile can mitigate distance and the lack of population density. How to harness the knowledge potential of a highly literate society with a good pedagogical framework and, if the situation demands, a pinch of ICT.
So why Mongolia? Technically it is classified as a transitioning economy and so falls a bit outside what you might have seen on this site so far. Yet, it remains one of the most sparsely populated countries on earth, approximately 2 people per square kilometre compared to the 516 per square kilometre from where I am writing you now, the Republic of Korea (World Bank, 2013). It is increasingly urbanized (the rural population has decreased 4.3% in a three year span from 2010-2013 (World Bank). And contrary to what many might think, rural populations are increasing in many parts of the developing world. Mongolia is gradually headed in the opposite direction.

This, at least for mobile learning or ICT based learning of any sort presents advantages. Greater access to existing technological infrastructure (primarily in the capital and largest city, Ulan Bator, which houses about half the total population of the country), greatest concentration of educational institutions to structure and accredit the learning, greater opportunity for networking and collaboration and student resiliency. Mongolia is currently a highly literate society (well over 97%) and a relatively educated one (access to education is almost guaranteed).

According to the We are Social data, and corroborated (approximately) in the years since then through other data sources (World Bank, UNICEF, etc.), many of the educational and technological data suggests are positive. We see elementary school participation at over 100% (possible as repeat students and students over a particular age are counted), secondary school participation at well above 70%, and even pre-primary school participation at well over 80%. There are some discrepancies between male and female access to education, but not as severe as one might see in many places. Technologically, there are over 100 mobile phones per 100 people, heavy investment in infrastructure (cloud investment primarily from China), limited internet user growth, all suggesting an environment with great potential for mobile.

Yet, there remains in Mongolia a persistent streak, both demographically and culturally, of nomadism. So, we see a highly literate, increasingly mobile, very young, and highly dispersed population. We see major technological investment (China) in supporting technologies for mobile and very little impetus for improving fixed line, bandwidth, or non-mobile connectivity due to both geographical distances and a sparse population. We see continued and considerable evidence of a nomadic populace, a populace presumably reasonably equipped with mobile technology.

Specifically for higher education (apologies, but this is my focus), there is also a very limited pool of universities, making mlearning certainly feasible in terms of scope and scale. Several of these are discipline oriented or considerably specialized. Further, you have one governing consortium for all the universities, the Consortium of Mongolian Universities and Colleges-CMUC), another natural conduit for funneling these activities through (ideally as it begins to scale out from one project). Some of the representative CMUC members include the following:

Defense University of Mongolia

Mongolia National University

Mongolian University of Culture and Art

Mongolia University of Education

Mongolian Academy of Sciences

Mongolian University of Science and Technology

Mongolia International University

Mongolian Technical University

Mongolian Business Institute

Construction Technology College

Essentially, you are working with a good combination of saturated technology (mobile), high literacy, a limited educational conduit to filter all pedagogy and learning environments through (higher education), and a highly dispersed and extremely young populace.

We are starting to see some mobile projects emerge from Mongolia as well that might have some bearing in developing nations. We see the Mongolian government distributing solar and mobile technology to nomadic peoples (emphasizing their ability to maintain their nomadic lifestyle), we see (physically) mobile kindergartens for nomadic children, mobile libraries (again, the material kind) and more suggesting a focus on reaching out to the nomadic populace. Mobile, again as the technology of greatest saturation, has potential to augment these efforts for learning and further development.

I am typing this out from Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi reflecting on the past week spent with the good people of UN Habitat, specifically those associated with the CityRAP tool. The CityRAP tool trains city managers and municipal technicians in small to intermediate sized cities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to understand and plan actions aimed at reducing risk and building resilience through the elaboration of a City Resilience Action Plan.

A few caveats at the onset here. This reads a bit more like an academic piece which it largely is. It is drawn from something larger I wrote a bit ago for another paper. It might also read like an attack on the SDGs, which is not my point. The point here is that the SDGs have generated some incredible results and I sincerely support them, but we must be mindful of what is being mobilised in our pursuit of them. My focus is education and I suggest that the provisions of the SDGs related specifically to that field suggest particular scaled interventions (or at least make those approaches particularly attractive). Scale exacts pressure on particular types of education.

As part of my association with the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh (a version of this post appears there as well), I recently traveled with colleagues to deliver a three day workshop on digital education for Syrian academics who have been displaced by the conflict. The University has worked for a long time with the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA), a great organisation providing urgently-needed help to academics in immediate danger, those forced into exile, and many who choose to work on in their home countries despite serious risks.

We seem to have endless ideas on how to use Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D). From job creation to women’s empowerment to civic participation, a number of ICT4D interventions have been developed and implemented over the years. Common question asked in my work is “what type of technology that might have biggest impact in our society in the coming years?”. As we have learned, ICTs in itself aren’t sufficient. While factors contributing to the success of ICT4D have become apparent, and many have written about them, I feel there's still a need to highlight some of them.

We have been some of the most vocal critics of Bridge International Academies (BIA), largely because most investigations and evaluations of their edtech impact to improve schooling in sub-Saharan Africa have been less than spectacular (many would say the impact is non-existent). So imagine our surprise to see Wayan Vota's latest ICTworks™ post highlighting the successes of BIA in Liberia.

We need to make women in innovation more visible, and correct the gender imbalance in the stories we tell. We need to tell more stories about the women working at the top of humanitarian innovation, and so today I sat down with Tanya Accone, Senior Advisor at UNICEF Innovation, to tell the story of a woman working at the top of a very visible humanitarian innovation team for a very visible humanitarian agency.

We do a lot of work on open learning as well and it was clear there was tension between these open educational platforms (like Coursera, edX, etc.) and their use in local contexts, particularly in emerging economies. There is tension there. Open educational technologies are too often framed as a transparent instrument for educational export, keeping (specifically Western or Global North) curricula, pedagogy, and educational values intact whilst they are broadcast to a global population in deficit.

I remember when I first started hearing the buzz about bots. My first thought? 'Here we go again...' - a reaction to the endless cycles of hype followed by business-as-usual that typifies the digital sector. However, over the past few months I've had the opportunity to design a few 'bots 4 good', and I'd like to share what I've learned: how they work, what they could be useful for, and where to start if you'd like to get one. I believe that done well, they could be really useful add-ons to your digital strategy as they provide a rich 'in-between' space for mobile users who aren't fully digitally literate.

Last week, I was at TICTeC 2018 where researchers, activists and practitioners discussed the impact of civic technology, or civic tech. This blogpost summarises the discussion of Two heads are better than one: working with governments.